I got it wrong. Look, I'm well aware I got it wrong and uh, I got it wrong.

I gotta ask Phobia, were your parents killed by a roving gang of copy editors behind the opera? Because your very first sentence had a full-stop right smack-bang in the middle of it. Some Guy TT aaaaalmost lost, but your total inability to check your own work for errors was the dogshit bullet that finished you off.

Your very first sentence had a full-stop right smack-bang in the middle of it . . . your total inability to check your own work for errors was the dogshit bullet that finished you off.

Look I could rattle on about the story with potential that I shelved for this ugly Christmas sweater. But that would be making excuses. I've already made enough kneejerk shitposts to feed Uganda. Bottom line, I lost. So make sure the blindfold's on tight. Fast tar'in, good tar'in.

(Thanks for the candor though. That isn't sarcasm, I'm being sincere.)

You may or may not know that I, Fanky C. Malloons esq. have a huge lady-boner for myth, legend, and folklore. You probably definitely know that I also have a massive hate-boner for judging because while I enjoy THE POWER, you are all terrible and it makes me furious and sad. So, it is with great trepidation that I present to you this week's theme: World Folklore.

I have at my disposal a gigantic reference volume of folk tales from around the world, which I will use to assign an inspirational folk tale to everyone who signs up. Because my internet at home is broken, and I am mad about it, you are not allowed to do any research on your folk tale. You must take the tale that I give to you at face value, and use to inspire your entry. Having said that, your entry does not have to be a straight re-telling of the folk tale that you are assigned, you can do whatever you want with it, as long as it is clear that your story is in some way influenced or inspired by it.

Because my Book O' Lore is so vast, I can't assign you stories 100% randomly, therefore your sign up posts must include a number between 1 and 4 followed by a number between 1 and 12. Or, if you're too wishy washy to choose your own numbers, anyone with a set of dice (which is probably everyone ITT, let's be real) can choose your numbers for you if I don't do it first.

Word count: 1000
Entries close: 9pm PST on Friday, Sept 19th
Submissions close: 7am PST on Monday Sept 22nd (because I'm not staying up until midnight to post that submissions are closed, so if you want to work on it all night, feel free)

ENTRANTS:
Meinberg - THE SEVEN WISE MEN OF BUNEYR
LOU BEGAS MOUSTACHE - RABBIT KILLS BIG MAN-EATER
Broenheim - THE STORY OF MR. FOX
Entenzahn - MANDRA-MANKANA, ALSO CALLED BAKUTA-TERKANA-TARANA OR KANTAYULKANA
Grizzled Patriarch - THE QUEEN WITH A HUNDRED LOVERS
Pootie Tang - GIFTS FOR MY SON MOHAMMED
Phobia - AKI GAHUK, THE FATHER OF THE CROCODILES
Guiness13 - THE RAT PRINCESS AND THE GREEDY MAN
Amused Frog - THE TIGER AND THE FROG
God Over Djinn - ORIGIN OF THE JA-LUO
starr - MITI’ AND MAGPIE MAN
satsui no thankyou - HOW RABBI JOSHUA WENT TO PARADISE ALIVE
Anathema Device - THE RED CALF
newtestleper - THE BEGINNING
curlingiron - THE MAN IN THE MOON
Your Sledgehammer - DIAMOND CUT DIAMOND
Fumblemouse - MOUNTAIN OF THE BELL
Tyrannosaurus - IN THE BEGINNING
Djeser - UNDER THE GREEN OLD OAK TREE
Noah - LATA AND SINOTA
Ironic Twist - AN EXILE'S REVENGE
Blade_of_tyshalle - MOTHER HOLLE Blade_of_tyshalle's rejected folk tale THE MONKEY'S FIDDLE is up for grabs, with the potential of netting a DM for B_o_t if I like your story better.
systran - MY SON ALI
Saint Drogo - THE GHOST PENITENTE
Surreptitious Muffin - WITCH FLIGHTS
Benny the Snake - THE TIGER CHANGED INTO A WOMAN
Morning Bell - JUAN THE FOOL
Juniper Cake - GINAS AND THE RAJAH
Some Guy TT - HOW TURTLE’S GREED BROUGHT HIM TO A SAD END
The Sean - THE BABRACOTE AND THE CAMUDI
crabrock - something else about babies, idk
Paladinus - THE STORY OF JUAN AND THE MONKEY

A FINAL NOTE:
If Sitting Here doesn't finish the week 100 crits before submissions close, she automatically gets a DM, whether she actually enters or not. will be eternally shamed by all who enter the dome, I guess.

Fanky Malloons fucked around with this message at Sep 20, 2014 around 03:52

Using DMs for anything other than indicating the quality of someone's writing is petty and shameful, and not a practice I want to see come to the dome.

kaishai won't count anything that's not in the official results post, and since you wrote the official results post for that week, i don't see you getting a DM for that, unless somebody else starts up their own archive. be my guest!

I gotta ask Phobia, were your parents killed by a roving gang of copy editors behind the opera? Because your very first sentence had a full-stop right smack-bang in the middle of it. Some Guy TT aaaaalmost lost, but your total inability to check your own work for errors was the dogshit bullet that finished you off.

The actual tale was really long, so you get the cliff-notes sidebar version + the first paragraph. Sorry not sorry.

quote:

There is heavy irony in the title “The Seven Wise Men of Buneyr,” because this is a classic numskull tale concerning a group of men who behave in an absurdly foolish fashion. The basic plot of the tale is provided by “Numskulls Unable to Count Their Own Number”, while other incidents compound the foolishness until the shepherd to whom they become indebted begs for mercy:

Seven men of Buneyr once left their native wilds for the purpose of seeking their fortunes. When evening came they all sat down under a tree to rest, when one of them said, “Let us count to see if we are all here.” So he counted, “One, two, three, four, five, six,” but, quite omitting to reckon himself, he exclaimed, “There’s one of us missing, we are only six!”

“Nonsense!” cried the others, and the whole company of seven began counting with uplifted forefingers, but they all forgot to count themselves.

quote:

Big Man-eater lived with his wife at a certain place and wanted to kill human beings. People heard of it and said, “They want to kill us,” and all were afraid.

Then Rabbit said, “Give me an old dress,” and they gave it to him. He said, “Give me an old blanket,” and they gave that to him. Then he put on the dress, wrapped up his head in the old blanket, and started off.

When he reached the place and stood in the yard Big Man-eater’s wife saw him and came out, and asked who he was. “I am your youngest aunt who has traveled to this place,” he said. “Come in,” said Big Man-eater’s wife, so he started to go in. “Sit down,” she said, and down he sat. Then they gave the supposed aunt some hard deer meat to eat, but he said, “I can’t eat that, because I have no teeth. I need a hatchet, for I can’t eat that [as it is].” So they gave him a hatchet and he chopped the dry venison into small pieces and ate them. Then he said, “That is the way I always eat it.”

Now Big Man-eater lay down but the two women sat still by the fire. Rabbit said to Big Man-eater’s wife, “When your husband is asleep what kind of noise does he make?”

“When he is not sleeping very soundly he makes a noise like ‘sololon sololon.’ When he makes a noise like ‘soloń soloń’ he is very sound asleep.”

“I will stay all night with you; in the morning I will start on,” said Rabbit. So Big Man-eater’s wife lay down and Rabbit lay down close to the fire. As he lay there he listened to the noises Big Man-eater was making. Then he slept and made a noise like “sololon sololon.” After some time he made a noise like “soloń soloń.” Then Rabbit took the hatchet and, after he had sat close to Big Man-eater for a while listening, he struck him with it in the neck and cut his head off. Then he threw off his old dress and blanket, shouted, jumped up and down several times, went out of the house, and ran off.

quote:

Once upon a time there was a young lady called Lady Mary, who had two brothers. One summer they all three went to a country seat of theirs, which they had not before visited. Among the other gentry in the neighborhood who came to see them was a Mr. Fox, a bachelor, with whom they, particularly the young lady, were much pleased. He used often to dine with them, and frequently invited Lady Mary to come and see his house. One day that her brothers were absent elsewhere, and she had nothing better to do, she determined to go thither, and accordingly set out unattended. When she arrived at the house and knocked at the door, no one answered.

At length she opened it and went in; over the portal of the door was written, “Be bold, be bold, but not too bold.” She advanced; over the staircase was the same inscription. She went up; over the entrance of a gallery, the same again. Still she went on, and over the door of a chamber found written:

Be bold, be bold, but not too bold,
Lest that your heart’s blood should run cold!

She opened it; it was full of skeletons and tubs of blood. She retreated in haste, and, coming downstairs, saw from a window Mr. Fox advancing towards the house with a drawn sword in one hand, while with the other he dragged along a young lady by her hair. Lady Mary had just time to slip down and hide herself under the stairs before Mr. Fox and his victim arrived at the foot of them. As he pulled the young lady upstairs, she caught hold of one of the banisters with her hand, on which was a rich bracelet. Mr. Fox cut it off with his sword. The hand and bracelet fell into Lady Mary’s lap, who then contrived to escape unobserved, and got safe home to her brothers’ house.

A few days afterwards Mr. Fox came to dine with them as usual. After dinner the guests began to amuse each other with extraordinary anecdotes, and Lady Mary said she would relate to them a remarkable dream she had lately had.

“I dreamt,” said she, “that as you, Mr. Fox, had often invited me to your house, I would go there one morning. When I came to the house I knocked at the door, but no one answered. When I opened the door, over the hall I saw written, ‘Be bold, be bold, but not too bold.’ But,” said she, turning to Mr. Fox, and smiling, “It is not so, nor it was not so.”

Then she pursued the rest of the story, concluding at every turn with, “It is not so, nor it was not so,” until she came to the room full of skeletons, when Mr. Fox took up the burden of the tale, and said:
It is not so, nor it was not so,
And God forbid it should be so!
which he continued to repeat at every subsequent turn of the dreadful story, until she came to the circumstance of his cutting off the young lady’s hand, when, upon his saying, as usual:

It is not so, nor it was not so,
And God forbid it should be so!
Lady Mary retorts by saying:

But it is so, and it was so,
And here the hand I have to show!

at the same moment producing the hand and bracelet from her lap, whereupon the guests drew their swords, and instantly cut Mr. Fox into a thousand pieces.

MANDRA-MANKANA, ALSO CALLED BAKUTA-TERKANA-TARANA OR KANTAYULKANA
National Origin: Aboriginal Australian

quote:

Mandra-mankana once came to the neighborhood of Pando. Two girls who saw him jeered at him, because his back was just the same as his front. He told their mother, who was his noa (that is, they were from a kin group with which marriage would be culturally acceptable) to send her two daughters to his camp the following night.

When she told them of his demand, they ridiculed him, but yet they went there, and lay down one on each side of the sleeping old man. Then they heaped up a ridge of sand on either side of him, so that he thought his girls were there. But these had meanwhile crept away out of the sand and lay down to sleep in the camp of their mother.

When the Elder woke in the night he rose upright, and saw that he was quite alone, and that the girls had cheated him. Hence his name of Bakutaterkana-tarana (He who rises up to no avail). He went forth thinking of revenge.

Through his songs he caused plants to grow, some with bitter and some with pleasant tasting fruit. The two girls found these plants and ate first of the bitter and then of the good fruit. Delighted with the latter they sprang from one bush to the other. Thus after a time they came to a tanyu bush laden with its red and yellow fruit, where lurked Mandra-mankana in concealment, to destroy them. As they came near to him he threw his boomerang at one and broke her ankle, and then rushing up he killed her by a blow on her head. The other sister ran away to save herself, but he followed her and killed her also. He then cut off the breasts of the dead girls and carried them with him as he went further.

Coming to a camp where some young boys were amusing themselves in a plain by throwing boomerangs, he hid himself behind some bushes, and watched them at their play. Then one of the boys threw his boomerang so far that it fell near the old man. The boy sought for it and was about to take it when the pinnaru [clan elder] seized him by the hand. He was frightened, but Mandramankana calmed him by giving him a lizard [to eat], and he soon became friendly with him, and promised at his request to make a new song, and called to all the people to come and hear it. They assembled, even the sick and the women with child.

The boy began to sing and the pinnaru came out of the bushes, painted and decked with feathers, and carrying the breasts of the girls hanging on his chest. He danced to the onlookers, in the front ranks of whom two young men, the noas of the girls, were sitting. These immediately recognized the breasts of their noas, and when the pinnaru retired dancing, they stuck their kandris [boomerang with a sharpened ends] in the ground before them. When he again danced near to them, each seized his kandri and struck him so that both his legs were broken. Then they split his head open, and at the same time all the people fell upon him and even the children struck him. Then they buried him and laying his bag at the head of the grave they went elsewhere.

One day a crow perched itself on the grave of Mandra-mankana. Three times it knocked with its beak on the wood which was lying on the grave, and cried “Ka! Ka! Ka!”

Then the dead man woke up and came out of the grave, and looked round, but no one was to be seen. Then he looked for footprints and found that the people had all gone in the same direction, but by three different ways. While the strong and hale ones had gone, some to the right and some to the left, hunting as they went alone, the old and the sick had gone straight on between the two other tracks. These be followed till he came to the neighborhood of their new camp, and he concealed himself in the bushes near where they were busy in the creek, driving the fish together to catch them.

They had pulled up bushes and grass and were driving the fish before them with these in heaps. Mandra-mankana kept himself concealed in the water, and opening his mouth, he sucked in and swallowed the water, fish, grass and men. Some few who were at a distance, observing that their comrades and nearly all those who were fishing, had disappeared, and looking round to see where they had gone to, saw with alarm that the monster in the water had surrounded them with his arms. Only a few of them escaped by jumping over them. The Mura-mura Zanta-yul-kana (“Grass-swallower Mura-mura”), looking after them, gave to each, as he ran, his murdu name [that is, the name of its clan totem].